Postal services may give postal rate discounts to individuals and/or companies that presort mail to a particular presort level. Each presort level has a different postage rate. The cost of postage may decrease depending on the number of pieces of mail presorted and/or the presort level achieved. A plurality of different publications can be bundled together to increase the number of publications that qualify for a lower postage presort rate. Historically, publications that were co-mailed had to have approximately the same trim size and could not vary greatly in thickness.
A wide variety of systems are available for presorting mail. In some examples, a first bindery produces a plurality of first publications and a second bindery, that may be located in a different facility, produces a plurality of second publications. The first publications and the second publications are then transported by truck to a co-mailing facility. The different publications are unloaded and placed onto conveyors that merge to create a common mail stream and, thus, merge the first publications with the second publications. In some instances, the different publications are transferred onto the common mail stream in an order that corresponds to a mail carrier route order and/or an order that will satisfy postal discounts.
One known system for combined mailing of a plurality of diverse publications is described in U.S. Pat. No. 7,133,851. The described system includes a first bindery and a second bindery that produces a plurality of first publications and a plurality of second publications, respectively. The first publications and the second publications may have size restrictions such as, a maximum height, a maximum length, a maximum width, and a maximum weight. The described system also includes a co-mailer that merges a stream of first publications with a stream of second publications into a unique order to send the different publications to different recipients at more favorable mail rate. However, the described system, as well as many other known systems, requires multiple binderies to simultaneously produce different publications to co-mail.